Iran Rejects New Nuclear Negotiations, Denies Receiving Letter From Trump

President Trump announced Friday that the day prior he sent a letter to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, seeking the reopening of new nuclear negotiations, while floating the potential that longtime sanctions could be dropped.

Tehran has responded by saying it never received a letter, and also by dismissing the possibility of opening new talks, after the US already years ago abandoned the Obama-brokered JCPOA nuclear deal. Lost in the mail?…

Trump recently told US media outlets, “Hopefully we can have a peace deal, I’m not speaking out of strength or weakness. I’m just saying I’d rather see a peace deal, than the other. But, the other, will solve the problem.”

However, Iran’s Permanent Representative to the UN Amir Saeid Iravani rejected the overture. “Trump says he has sent a letter to Iran. We have not received any such letter,” the representative stated.

And Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi told AFP on Friday, “If America wants to return to a new nuclear agreement with Iran, naturally it should observe the conditions of a fair and just negotiation, and we have proven that we will not answer the language of pressure and threat but will respond to the language of respect and dignity as we did in the past.”

The Iranians also appear to be passing over in silence Trump’s not so veiled military threats. For example the president said in a Friday interview with Fox Business’s Maria Bartiromo: ”I’ve written them a letter saying I hope you negotiate, because if we have to go in militarily, it’s going to be a terrible thing for them.“

The other alternative is you have to do something because Iran can’t have a nuclear weapon,” he followed with, echoing his prior message warning that Tehran can either sign a deal or potentially get bombed.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has described that the Islamic Republic’s current stockpile of 60% enriched uranium – if enriched to 90% – would be enough to produce six nuclear bombs.

Trump has recently brought back ‘maximum pressure’ on Iran, and has even this week advanced the possibility of cracking down on sanctions-busting Iranian oil exports on the high seas, using naval intervention. Clearly this is part of the big stick package of actions meant to push Tehran to the table.

An earlier Fox News interview in February marked the point at which Trump first laid out that Iran has two choices. “Everybody thinks Israel with our help or our approval will go in and bomb the hell out of them,” Trump had said at the time while discussing potential Israeli military action against Tehran.

“I would prefer that not happen. I’d much rather see a deal with Iran where we can do a deal, supervise, check it, inspect it,” the president continued.

That’s when he made one of the more provocative and threatening comments: “There’s two ways to stopping them: With bombs or a written piece of paper,” he had previously said. But so far Tehran is viewing talks with the Trump admin as a dead end, and is clearly not moving toward the negotiating table.